but in general no man can claim a strict propriety in any thing he
hath:—
When Gods do riches lend, it is but just
That when they please we should resign our trust.
We ought not therefore to take it amiss if they demand those things
which they lent us only for a small time; for even your common brokers,
unless they are unjust, will not be displeased if they are called upon
to refund their pawns, and if one of them is not altogether so ready
to deliver them, thou mayst say to him without any injury, Hast thou
forgot that thou receivedst them upon the condition to restore them?
The same parity of reason holds amongst all men. The Gods have put life
into our hands by a fatal necessity, and there is no prefixed time
when what is so deposited will be required of us, as the brokers know
not when their pawns will be demanded. If therefore any one is angry
when he is dying himself, or resents the death of his children, is it
not very plain, that he hath forgot that he himself is a man and that
he hath begotten children as frail as himself? For a man that is in his
wits cannot be ignorant that he is a mortal creature, and born to this
very end that he must die. If Niobe, as it is in the fable, had had
this sentence always at hand, that she must at length die, and could not
In the ever-flowering bloom of youth remain,
Nor loaded with children, like a fruitful tree,
Behold the sun’s sweet light,—
she would never have sunk to such a degree of desperation as to desire
to throw off her life to ease the burthen of her sorrow, and call
upon the Gods to hurry her into the utmost destruction. There are
two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated
to the usages of man’s life, KNOW THYSELF, and NOTHING TOO MUCH; and
upon these all other precepts depend. And they themselves accord and
harmonize with each other, and each seems to illustrate the energy of
the other; for in _Know thyself_ is included _Nothing too much_; and so
again in the latter is comprised _Know thyself_. And Ion hath spoken of
it thus:—
This sentence, _Know thyself_, is but a word;
But only Jove himself could do the thing.